How to Talk About Religious Beliefs Without Sounding Silly

Plural is proper in light of the real religious landscape

This simple question is anything but. Asked countless millions of times in countless millions of places, it packs a surprising amount of misinformation, ignorance, and insult into a mere ten words. No one should even attempt to answer such a confused and prejudicial question without first running through a few statements and questions such as these:

Why did you only ask about one god when, according to other religious people, there are millions more up for consideration?

Believing or not believing in one god doesn’t determine if one is an atheist. An atheist is someone who does not believe in any gods. A person’s position on the one particular god that you find compelling doesn’t answer the question.

Posing a question that suggests that only your one god is relevant at best ignores and at worst insults billions of people who believe in another god or gods.

Anyone who wishes to attempt to have a sensible and honest discussion about religious belief in general must discuss gods in the plural because there never has been a time in the last several thousand years when there were not multiple gods believed in by people.

What if I were to ask you this: Do you believe in Vishnu or are you an atheist? Wouldn’t that seem like a prejudicial or just plain silly question?

Talking broadly about religion and belief in the context of a singular and particular god is standard operating procedure in the West. It is also wrong. It assumes that millions of Hindus and animists do not exist or matter, for example, and it assumes that billions of other religious believers did not exist in the past. Specific references to a specific god are correctly singular, obviously. Yahweh is singular. Allah, is singular. Jesus is singular. (Well, except for that Holy Trinity thing. But that’s another discussion) Daily we can hear and read bizarre statements and questions from people in news media who seem to think they are being global and rational. To date no one has disproved the existence of all gods other than the Jewish/Christian/Islamic one. They deserve a seat at the table of thought, too.

Pretending that only one god matters sends the not-so-subtle message that monotheism is so obviously correct that only one god is worthy of acknowledgment and consideration. Most nonbelievers are no better than believers on this. Many atheists who think they have religion all figured out get this simple point wrong over and over again when they tangle with believers. They will debate and discuss endlessly the singular god concept, apparently never once realizing that within the first seconds of the encounter they had yielded 99.999 percent of the battlefield by failing to ask the person to acknowledge that god belief is profoundly bigger than one god. The believer is allowed to evade a confrontation with our nature, that we are a god-creating species. It’s one of the things we do best and recognzing this can promote rational thinking about religious belief.

Source: Guy P. Harrison

Religious education being what it is in most schools, perhaps people just don’t know what the real religious landscape looks like. So, for anyone who hasn’t heard, many hundreds of thousands of religions have claimed the existence of many millions of gods. Throughout history and deep into our prehistory, people have declared that a staggering number and variety of gods exist. Since most gods are supposed to be immortal we can’t fairly dismiss them even if the religion behind them fades or goes extinct. So what if nobody worships Tiamat, the Mesopotamian goddess of the ocean and creation, anymore? She might still be hanging around somewhere in the universe. I don’t believe she is, but I certainly can’t prove that she’s not. And neither can the people who talk as if there is only one god to consider when the topic is general belief.

For those who imagine that everyone “really believes in only one god, the real god, they just express it differently”, I can assure you that this is not the case. I have spoken with Hindus in India and Nepal about this. I heard again and again that the gods they believe in are distinct and unique, definitely not different faces of a single god. Millions of animists today believe in millions of spirits/gods as well. Don’t all these people count as believers worthy of inclusion when talking about belief? Are their claims somehow less credible than that of the western monotheist?

Source: Guy P. Harrison

To be clear, this issue has nothing to do with the question of whether or not any particular god or gods exist. I’m not challenging anyone’s beliefs here. I’m only pointing to a lame grammatical and thought habit that springs from confused thinking about religious belief. Consider this a math lesson: More than one equals plural. I’m sure reasonable people don’t want to sound uninformed or blindly prejudiced when talking about religion. No well-meaning person wants to callously ignore or disparage the sincere beliefs of literally billions of living and dead people, right?

Specific references to the Jewish/Christian/Islamic god or to some vague but solitary “supreme being” would still be in the singular, of course. But all other generalized religious references need to reflect the fact that there are numerous gods on the table worthy of acknowledgement.

Anyone still having difficulty recognizing how nutty, rude, and wrong it is to constantly speak about general religious belief in the context of only one god may benefit from imagining how it would seem if virtually every general discussion about automobiles referenced only the Subaru Outback, as if no other types of vehicles exist or ever existed. Think how weird it would be if politicians and news media people talked and wrote about cars in the same twisted way they do religious belief:

“Government announces new national speed limits for the Subaru Outback.”

“New report out on risks associated with Subaru Outback driving while drunk.”

“Good news for Subaru Outback drivers, gas prices expected to drop.”

“Is LA’s Subaru Outback traffic causing still causing too much smog?”

Source: Guy P. Harrison

Wouldn’t such headlines be as ridiculous as they are inaccurate and misleading? But how different would they be from the real headlines we see from the BBC, CNN, the New York Times, and so on that always frame news, discussions, and debates in the context of a single god? Perhaps if we could all speak and write more accurately and honestly about belief in gods we could begin to think more rationally about them. It certainly couldn’t hurt. Just remember, regardless of what one believes or does not believe, plural is proper when talking in general about religious belief.

This paper sounds like another way of saying everyone can be god and that is true to some extent. But, we need to ask what kind of god am I? I can't control my bowels; I grow older every day; I work at a dead end job for forty hours a week. Hmm, very impotent but in my car, on the freeway with my stereo pumping out "Talking Body" I slip easily into the passing lane where the illusion predominates. Yes, here, for a fleeting fraction of space and time I am god but don't dare tell me that all god's are not equal. That might burst my bubble.

God and the God one believes in are not necessarily the same thing. The person who thinks there might be magical beings but who denies they have any right to tell him what to do is an atheist in all essentials.

All reasonable people believe that faith in God or religion should help otherwise they should be dropped. If they don't help or hinder they can be dropped if we feel like it. If they hinder they should be dropped. The religious person and the atheist should agree that if we are going to have faith, the content of the faith must be ideas and material that do no harm if they prove to be wrong. There should be no harm done.

If you follow those who claim to channel the word of God to you from God or who simply claim to be the publishers of God's message, then are you following God? If there is no God you are still following something. It is those people. It is the God that man has invented. But surely it is you deciding to follow them that is the problem - you are in a sense following not them but what you think of them. Ultimately you are following you. Whatever - you are still following an idol not God. An idol is a false God and if God does not exist then God is a false God!

If there really is a God you can still approach him as an idol.

If God does not exist, it follows that man insults us with faith in God. It follows that we praise nature for dealing with evil when it is not. To worship a God who does not exist means you worship nature and a figment of your own imagination. You worship what does not deserve to be worshipped and what does harm.

If God exists and we agree that people should be angry at him for the things he does and allows, the anger then should be directed at those who invent God if there is no God and those who invent a God in their heads even if there is a God. Belief in God makes you direct the blame at those who sin and thus cause a fallen world where babies are left even by God to suffer and die horribly. That accusation is horrendous.

Any answers for the problem of evil fail if there is no God. They are themselves evil for they excuse the inexcusable and see less evil where more should be seen. If there is no God then because of evil, you are unwittingly (and sometimes wittingly!) adoring evil when you adore God. A baby suffering is just evil and purposeless and thus you would be evil yourself for trying to say God has a plan unless there really is a God.

Man speaking for God and defending him is disgraceful when man refuses to take responsibility for condoning evil in the universe. If evil cannot be condoned or reconciled with a good God then man is bad for even trying to.

It is one thing in theory to say that there could be a God and his infinite love is compatible with the existence of evil. But it is still man’s word you are taking for it that this theory is plausible and true. Anger against man’s theology is not the same thing as anger against God. Even if there is a God, the God worshipped by people is their perception of God not God as he is. That is why we can rage against Christians condoning evil as God's will and still say it is not about anger against God. It is they we have the problem with for their God is in their heads and we are not talking about any real God even if there is one.

An atheist should ignore what man says about God and what God is like. Nothing is to be gained by making a God out of human doctrine and opinion. Such a God is only inside your head.

If there were no God then there would be no need for atheists. Therefore you're absolutely right when you say in your closing comment, "An atheist should ignore what man says about God and what God is like."
By ignoring God as a person atheists can continue to live in ignorance. Shrimad Bhagavatam, 3rd Canto chapter 12 verse 2 describes the first order of creation as; "self-deception, the sense of death, anger after frustration, the sense of false ownership, and the illusory bodily conception, or forgetfulness of one’s real identity." Atheism is steeped in all five forms of nescience. It is and always has been a creation of God. Atheists can only make claims to it based on these five principles of nescience.

As a modern-day Polytheist born and raised in the U.S.A., I wanted to write that I much appreciate many of the points you covered in your article.

It may be worth noting in future posts that 21st century Polytheism is not only seen in Hinduism and animism: various forms currently exist in other contexts and are actively practiced on a spectrum ranging from "reconstructionist" approaches to more "mystical" approaches--and everything in between. Kemeticism, Hellenic Polytheism, as well as some forms of Paganism and Neo-Paganism, Druidry, Asatru, etc., come to mind. Naturally, you'll sometimes also see those less-than-inspiring patterns and behaviors that tend to haunt human efforts to group, whether for secular or religious reasons. I like to think that such problems have a lot more to do with people being people than with the Gods Themselves. In any case, I can say that my own experiences of being a believing Polytheist in the modern era have enriched my life in ways that transcend all words. It's been a wonderful walk.

For an in-depth examination of polytheistic reasoning and philosophy, I would very much recommend John Michael Greer's thoughtful book "A World Full of Gods: An Inquiry into Polytheism."

What's the most confusing from an outsider's perspective, as someone who hasn't been raised in a religious community, is how people who do believe there is a God can't seem to agree on what the He wants from us, even when they says they are talking about the same American God concept or the same Muslim Allah.

In the end it seems that each person has their personal concepts. Even the popes from the Catholics don't agree between them. Each leader brings new rules.

In academia, it is utmost important to get all the terms correct. As someone in the theological field, one should refer to the term Gods as appose to God, when comparing faiths in the field. thank you for touching on this importance.

PS- I love the take on the Trinity, whether its plural or singular, had a massive chuckle there. :D

I agree that the question may need grammatical correction but not necessarily to make it to plural. I understand the question as "Do you believe in [ a/any ] God or are you an atheist?" I think, over time the question lost the 'a' or 'any', kind of like 'gotta', 'gonna', 'wanna' etc.

In the Hindu religion, even though there are several gods, when following a particular god, the scriptures specific to that god would undermine most of the other hindu gods or would say that particular god is the best and everyone else (gods) depend on this god. It seems it is designed deliberately that way in order to be able to focus on ONE eternal power (form) for ease of thinking, analyzing and understanding leading to spirituality / spiritual existence.